Hi Everyone,
A quick note to announce the release of our FREE Chinese iPhone software. A mobile version of the Popup Chinese Writing Pad, the Chinese Writer application comes with an interactive twenty-five character tutorial that teaches the basic rules of how to write Chinese characters stroke by stroke. There’s also an expert practice mode for advanced students that lets you practice writing several hundred more characters. And yes… there is full support for traditional characters.
http://itunes.apple.com/app/chinese-writer/id374152537?mt=8
Regardless of whether you’re totally new to writing characters or an old-hand, this application is useful to have. It will force you to write your characters with all of your strokes in the correct order and proper proportion. It will teach total beginners the meanings of many common characters, and is fun too. It’s the sort of thing you can use to practice for five minutes in the car, or when you have a few minutes between appointments.
If you have an iPhone or an iTouch, please do check it out. And do us a favor by rating the software and (ideally) leaving a recommendation to help others find it as well.
Well, I just tried this out on my iPhone, for traditional characters, as I am currently learning. I found it very simple, with hardly any features and no choice to skip a character if you already know it. That on its own is nothing bad though. However, there are mistakes in it, for example: 木 is not an “ideograph” as the application says, but a pictogram. The character 舊(jiù) meaning “old” is shown in simplified (旧).
I am sorry but I am not able to give a recommendation for this application. I think for those who are learning characters, they should be using Taiwan’s MoE Stroke order website: http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/about_program.jsp. They also have a book form, with the 3000 most used characters in it.
English site: http://eng.fareast.com.tw/bookinfo.php?idx=02&sidx=01&pic=12013
Chinese site: http://www.fareast.com.tw/bookinfo.php?idx=03&sidx=04&pic=12013
They show the CORRECT stroke orders for traditional characters. A lot of fonts show incorrectly written characters leading to mistakes later on. Just look at a character like 眾 or 肖 or even 然.
A very handy tool for the iPhone/iPod Touch is Pleco. http://www.pleco.com/pleco2ip.html. It uses the CC-CEDICT among other dictionaries. Be sure to download the CC-CEDICT though, it is free but you have to register and download it separately in the application itself. Pleco also has a stroke order plugin, but you have to pay for it. It’s around $8.00 I believe. It’s up to you whether or not you want it.
I also use Yellow Bridge’s site for character etymology and you can use it for stroke order as well.
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php
While all of these may not be on the iPhone, I think they are good resources. I use Pleco EVERYDAY.
I think with these tools people can figure out how to properly write characters and excel at their own pace without being held back. Again, sorry this isn’t helpful to your application, but I am here to learn the language and help others do so as well.
加油！